On Thursday night live on stage at the Times Union Center in Albany, she sang Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby.”

And that just might be the best summation of the current state of contemporary country music.

But, of course, Sugarland was never really was a country band to begin with, although you couldn’t tell that from the plethora of cowboy hats sported by the quite sizable crowd at the Times Union Center to see their concert on Thursday. The band – really just the duo of singer Jennifer Nettles and guitarist Kristian Bush – knows its way around big, arena-ready pop hooks, and the sound created by their five-piece backing band owes more to the early-’80s MTV bands than it does to Loretta Lynn or Tammy Wynette.

The fact of the matter, however, is that no matter how you try to pigeon-hole Sugarland’s sound, it all comes down to Nettles’ soulful, soaring voice, and there’s simply no denying it. The gal can flat-out sing.

The multi-platinum-selling, Grammy Award-winning duo’s current tour is dubbed “In Your Hands” because many of the selections performed were requested by fans via Facebook, Twitter or the old-fashioned way – by holding up signs at the concert. Midway through the show, Bush strolled through the crowd to give away a guitar to a lucky fan, and on the way back to the stage he collected dozens of song-request signs. Nettles looked them over – often holding them up like show-and-tell-for the whole audience to see – and led the band through a string of crowd-pleasers including “Joey,” “We Run, “Little Miss,” “Every Girl Like Me” and others. A bit later, they brought a WGNA-FM contest winner – Courtney O’Dell of Gloversville – to sing “Baby Girl” with them.

Nettles hit her own highwater mark with a scorched rendition of the big-ballad-with-a-twist “Stay,” followed by a turn at the piano for “Love.” But, in fact, she was utterly charming and decidedly unpretentious throughout the entire 100-minute performance exuding a girl-next-door attitude spiked with a bit of sass.

For his part, Bush stepped up to take over some of the lead vocals only on “Run,” and throughout the rest of the show seemed quite content to play second fiddle to Nettles’ star turn. And that was for the best. You really don’t want to try to get into a singing competition with a powerhouse like Nettles.